05 February 2017

Nic Lemieux, ICT director, Canonical

Before virtualisation became commonplace, every server had a single OS and was connected to legacy switch ports. Network control was managed at an individual switch level, and components throughout the infrastructure were locally and individually run.

This caused two problems – the control of the network equipment was tied to each device, and it was also inflexible.

The industry is now migrating from function-specific network hardware and will be using SDN and NFV. The premise of these technologies isn’t new, but their expanding uses in the telco industry are.

Because communication service providers (CSPs) deliver critical services and cannot compromise quality standards or SLA commitments, the technology principles that work for IT cloud applications cannot be applied to network services without accounting for carrier-grade requirements.

CSPs require a broad ecosystem when embracing these technologies and the benefits they provide. As the economics of traditional data centre networking becomes less desirable, SDN and NFV solutions offer both opex and capex relief.

An overlay SDN allows IT teams to create their own data centre network on top of existing infrastructure without modifying any hardware – particularly valuable in telecoms clouds where multiple tenants need network independence.

A well-designed cloud gives you rapid scaling, dynamic deployment and workload bursting beyond your premises. All of these capabilities can be employed by SDN and NFV infrastructure, but realising the economic and technical benefits of a cloud requires standardisation and repeatability. CSPs should have a solution that makes it easy to interchange, integrate or update specific components, without the need for expensive consultants, complex static scripts, or redeployment of the solution.

Overall, SDN offers benefits in flexible configuration options and improved methods of data routing. But applications need to work well in various SDN environments, and Big Data, analytics and other cloud-based solutions must be compatible with today’s network infrastructure. When creating these environments, testing against multiple different SDN solutions with various different workloads is useful.

The transition from single function, proprietary devices to commodity, software defined infrastructure is a natural one. Economics have driven it, technological advancements have enabled it, and soon it will become impossible to remain competitive without SDN and NFV infrastructure. And, as telcos of all sizes choose open systems, standards and interoperability as a fundamental, we are poised on a precipice of open source cloud deployment.